I teach a course on love affairs. I am a matchmaker of food jobs. If you know what you love to do, not what you have to do, it is time to act and not wait a minute more.

We have way too many choices so it is difficult to narrow the options to a precious few. Eventually, you can make a decision and move forward after coolly examining your options.

After all, think of the number of significant others who pass through your life before you find and embrace your beloved.

Think how often we all make wrong turns before arriving at our destination.

Think of sailors who understand the navigational concept: that we almost never go directly from point A to point B. Instead, we set a course, periodically take readings of our position, then make adjustments to the very head winds which threaten to overturn our boat.

Some are threatened by changes: others are challenged by them. But like it or not, we must accept an irrefutable truth: everything around us is changing — fast!

Each of us must chart our own journey and hope we can use our past experience to propel us into the future.

Yesterday I spoke to a young culinary student who told me, with some passion, that she hates her job and hates the place where she is living. She hates her long commute. She hates the long, cold winters in New York. She said she wants to move to Florida but can’t because her grandmother will be upset.

Her grandmother is 66 years old. She believes she needs to stick to her horrible life until her grandmother dies.

I asked, “But, what if your grandmother lives to be 96?”

No problem. It’ll just be 30 years wasted…Meanwhile, there may a food job waiting for her near a beach in Florida. She just needs to put her toe in the water. And send her grandmother a plane ticket to visit…occasionally.

The good news is we all have so many choices. This is unfortunately also the bad news.

One way to begin a career search is to symbolically examine the heavens through a telescope. Think of the planets as broad career possibilities such as restaurants and foodservice, buying and selling, farming and fishing, finance and fund raising, philanthropy and education, science and technology, art and design, promotion and advertising — and the media.

Then narrow the field as though looking through a microscope and explore the brightest stars within the universe you have have chosen.

As you may know, I teach a Food Jobs class at the CIA. I ask the students to take a look  at the 150 foods I have listed in my Food Jobs book and immediately cross through everything that doesn’t interest them. Then choose a specific job within a specific broad category and undertake serious research to get more information about it.

You may find it helpful to undertake a similar exploration for yourself. Once you have examined your idea from every side, you may decide this is definitely not what you want to do after all, or with a stroke of good luck you have reinforced your initial decision.

Once you have chosen the direction you want to take, it is relatively easy to devise a road map that will lead you to your destination.

Here then are some questions to consider:

What is My Dream Job? If I could do anything in the world, what would it be?

Write a 300-word Description of the Jobs You are Seeking

What Experience Do I Need?

How Can I Get This Experience?

What Is the Best Part of This Job?

What Is the Downside?

What Salary Can I Anticipate? (Check The Bureau of Labor Statistics online to find this information. It will vary depending on the location.)

What is The First Step I Need to Take?

When Will I Take This Step? Today. Tomorrow.. Not Now… Never….

Ready? Get Set. Or Stop?

Yes! — It is possible to spend hundreds of hours in the classroom and thousands of dollars as a student in a professional culinary school and, upon graduation, have not even the faintest glimmering of an idea about a future career.

Meet Ms. Puzzled.

I tried and tried to delve into the recesses of Ms. P’s heart to help her arrive at a possible career path. Not a flicker of interest in any of my ideas lit her fire. In despair, I suggested she take a look at the list of 150 professions at the beginning of my book, FOOD JOBS. I asked her to cross off every option that didn’t interest her.

When next we met, she declared: “Ice Cream!”

Hmmm! Have you noticed that when you go on vacation, there is always one store that has a line outside? It’s the ice cream shop.

The Soda Fountain by Norman Rockwell

Maybe it is nostalgia for a Norman Rockwell ice cream parlor with its green marble counter, the brass foot rail and two kids perched on swiveling stools sipping a soda with two straws. Maybe it’s a longing for homemade, hand churned ice cream. Maybe its simply almost everyone loves ice cream.

Here’s another fascinating fact: Each American consumes a yearly average of 23.2 quarts of ice cream, ice milk, sherbet, ices and other commercially produced frozen dairy products.

Ice cream worldwide sales are anticipated to reach $65 billion this year. The category is dominated by Nestlé which owns Haagen Dazs and Dreyers. Unilever owns Breyers and Ben & Jerry’s, and Baskin-Robbins is a unit of Dunkin Brands.

So Ms. P has decided to open a small ice cream shop at the seaside.

She did some research yet she is much more interested in Heston Blumenthal’s idea of bacon and egg ice cream. But what got her totally lit up was a web site posting about Chin Chin‘s that bills itself as Europe’s first nitro ice cream parlor, “Chin Chin is half confectionery, half mad science lab.”

Now Ms. P is dreaming of  opening her own place; one that will combine the past and the future of ice cream, and a couple of eye-catching flavor names.

When it comes to food names, Ben & Jerry takes the prize for originality. The company employs a Primal Ice Cream Therapist whose task it is to dream up new flavors. This is no laughing matter.

When the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor was launched in 1991, it was a breakthrough in the ice cream business, and Wavy Gravy and Cherry Garcia launched the enterprise into the stratosphere which just proves what Ben & Jerry said all along: “The ‘90s are the ‘60s standing on your head and we are all the same person trying to shake hands with ourselves.”

The next step is to read The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments by David Leibowitz.

Then, she must dream up a name for the business and speak to the bank. She could offer to the loan officer the  information that the average number of licks to polish off a single scoop ice cream cone is approximately 50. That should clinch the deal.

Finally I whispered a word of warning for Ms. P., who has morphed into Ms. Determined: when the tourists go home and the school bell rings and Jack Frost nips, it may be necessary to switch from Ice Cream to candy apples, hot cider and warm winter soups with homemade bread and hand churned butter.

Or she could locate her store in a location where the sun shines every day.